Judi Dench's tired, husky voice-over captures perfectly the humdrum existence of a British bank official in Saigon weeks before the city fell to the Vietcong. She never turns in a bad performance, and this is no exception, ably matched by Frederic Forrest, an American actor best known for The Rose (for which he received an Oscar nomination) and the illfated One From the Heart, as the CIA agent who has a brief but passionate affair with her. David Hare's screenplay is a touch on the wordy side and fails to reproduce that at-the-edge-of-a-precipice paranoia that was central to similar war-torn films such as Missing and Under Fire. Director Stephen Frears (Gumshoe) turns in an impressive job, but it still lacks dramatic action and a much-needed change of pace.

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